Darkness: Perpetually Dissatisfied

I have been talking about how motivation as a matter of value and worth, how desire and passion as a matter of ‘individual will’, are indicative of our common and individual humanity at some essential and meaningful level so that I may ultimately shed some light on (my) interior darkness and (my lack of) heroism.

Throughout most of my life I have found very little to be of ‘lasting value and worth’, consequently I’ve always been very uninterested and unmotivated compared to other people. Even now, I don’t watch television or film (or movies), I don’t ‘entertain’, drink or smoke, have a hobby, garden, collect anything, or even have any ‘friends’ most people might consider worthy of the name. In college, my professors believed I was good at understanding the necessary shadings of difference that make a good student when I applied myself. But that was the problem, so very little struck me as of lasting significance, value or worth that I spent most of my time shunning education and even most forms of ‘fun’ in favor of searching for something ‘better’ and more fulfilling. If I managed decent grades on strength of good memory and sheer cleverness, I was never a very good student, and today, though I am not ‘searching’ as diligently as I once was or even for the same sorts of things, in some ways my ‘persistent perpetual dissatisfaction’ now finds even less to be of lasting significance or importance than ever before.

And such a maximizing ‘search’ has its price; as my wife often remarks, I don’t seem to enjoy life very much and worse, my abiding lack of interest in nearly everything has been often (mis)perceived as an evaluative and reductive dismissal, earning me something of a reputation for being arrogant. And to some extent, I think both assessments are correct. I’ve said before I think of myself as a differentialist, seeing difference and similarity everywhere, but I suspect it’s precisely such constant analysis that leaves me with a somewhat dark attitude about living and enjoying the activities of life. By taking and enjoying so little of life at face value, I find much of life little of value.

 ~

In my defense, I do point out that I do enjoy reading and writing, that a good bit of my reading and writing is quite life affirming – but of course some of it is really a continuation of my ‘negative differentialist search’. Differentiation inevitably has its shortcomings, but in the course of separating life affirming analysis from the more nihilistic that I discovered how such negativity is detrimental – even in a life affirming relationship.

I also enjoy my ‘occupation’ and truly feel being my wife’s partner, homemaker and stay at home father is my ‘avocation’, my ‘calling in life’, so unsurprisingly there are a great many things about ‘doing what I’m doing’ that make me deeply happy and satisfied (whether I am good at them or not). But I’ve been trying (as possibly many uxorious men do) to use the ‘powerotic‘ passion I have for my wife to get me motivated to do things I wouldn’t otherwise have the motivation to do, but the ‘bait and switch’ tactic of trying to get my wife to demand that I do things I don’t want to do (ostensibly so she’ll be happy) violates some pretty basic realities of an honest, intimate love symbol negotiation.

And this is what I meant about true heroism: I may be happy now merely to be on the path I’m on and ‘doing what I’m doing’, but in order to have the most happiness I can have in life, I’m eventually going to need to do something about this darkness. But my darkness, my shadow self, can only ever be faced down and conquered by me. My wife will help me of course because she loves me, but she can’t, powerotically or otherwise, do it for me. If I’m ever going to manage my own idea, hope and standard of ‘standing tall’, one less selfish, lazy, uncaring, unsympathetic, unmotivated and nihilistic, then I’ve got to be brave and be my own hero.